Southern Lehigh faces Northwestern for second straight season in Colonial League girls basketball final

It’s only appropriate Southern Lehigh and Northwestern are meeting for the second straight season in the Colonial League girls basketball championship game at 6 p.m. Saturday at Freedom High School.

That’s because the Spartans (18-5) and Tigers (22-1) easily have been the most dominating teams in the league for the last two seasons. Both have posted 32-3 records in league games, including playoffs, during that span.

Naturally, the programs have developed a rivalry.

The Tigers defeated Southern Lehigh 72-65 in last year's regular-season meeting but lost to the Spartans 62-57 in the championship game. This season, Northwestern dealt Southern Lehigh its only league defeat, 58-53.

Moreover, Southern Lehigh is seeking an unprecedented fourth straight title in the league’s 39-year history, and Megan Dellegrotti is trying to become just the second coach with as many as four league titles.

Deutsch's team certainly won't make it easy for the Spartans to four-peat. Veterans like forward Trista Cunningham, the only senior starter, and junior guards Sarah Segan and Sabrina Mertz have led Northwestern to another outstanding season a year after league MVP Sara Jones graduated.

The Tigers are 44-4 over the last two seasons with winning streaks of 20, which established a school record, 10 and 12, which Northwestern currently is riding.

“We’re excited to be in the title game,” Deutsch said. “I don’t know how many people expected us to be in it after losing the player of the year. These girls have really stepped up. Are all our games pretty on style points? No, but these girls refuse to quit and more often than not get the job done.”

Salisbury is the only team to beat the Tigers this season, 42-41, on Jan. 9. That came one game and two days after Northwestern’s emotional win over Southern Lehigh.

Against Northwestern, Southern Lehigh probably can't afford to start slowly like it did against Salisbury in the semifinals -- falling behind 14-2 and 18-8 -- before eventually prevailing 52-48.

It took junior guard Sydney Cyr, who didn’t start for the first time all season, to eventually put a spark in her team in the second quarter. Cyr, while not a big-time scorer, is a savvy competitor who does a lot of things to help her team win.

The Spartans also rallied from a 16-4 deficit to Salisbury in the regular season on their way to a 48-43 overtime victory. So Southern Lehigh also knows how to pick itself back up when things don’t go their way early.

“We’ve been in just about every situation you could be in this season,” said McDonald, who became Southern Lehigh’s eighth 1,000-point girls scorer in a 61-26 win over Pen Argyl on Jan. 4. She has scored 20-plus points in a game in a career-high four straight games entering the final. “We’ve had overtime games, we’ve been behind, we’ve been ahead and we’ve overcome it all. So I think we’re very prepared.”

Northwestern enters as the No. 1 seed based on its regular season win over Southern Lehigh. That makes this the 15th time in the 20 years of the four-team playoff tournament that the top two seeds have played for the championship.

Northwestern will like the fact that the No. 1 seed has won nine of those games. Southern Lehigh has to like the fact that of the five times the No. 2 seed has beaten No. 1, the Spartans were that No. 2 seed three times.